Running
in Place
by
Howard Schumann
In Fernando Eimbcke’s minimalist Lake
Tahoe, family members shut off emotional expression to
avoid coming to grips with a devastating loss. Teenager Juan (Diego
Cataño) wraps his Nissan car around a pole, then spends most
of the film reaching out to others to help him fix his car, masking
his need for emotional connection; Joaquin (Yemil Sefani), the younger
sibling, hides in a tent while the boys’ mother (Mariana Elizondo)
remains for long hours in the bathtub without communicating. It is only
late in the film that we find out the reason for this emotional turmoil.
Nominated
for the Golden Bear Award and winner of the FIPRESCI prize at the 2008
Berlin Film Festival as well as several honors at the Mexican Academy
Awards, Lake Tahoe is set in Chicxulub, near Progreso, Yucatan,
the area where a devastating asteroid was alleged to have hit the earth
65 million years ago. Shot with mostly wide-angle static shots and filled
with natural light, Lake Tahoe captures the lazy mood of a
town with its vast empty spaces, sparse vegetation, and low flat-roofed
buildings. The film takes its name from a bumper sticker on the family
car from an Aunt who visited the famous California resort some years
ago and whose meaning is revealed later in the film.
After
Juan crashes his red Nissan, he spends most of the day trying to find
a part to get the car running again and, in the process, must deal with
a variety of eccentric townspeople. His first contact, the elderly Don
Heber (Hector Herrera), a retired mechanic, hasn’t seen the car
but confidently tells him he needs a new distributor harness. Heber
takes his time, telling Juan to look for the part himself as he takes
care of his dog Sica, feeding him breakfast from the kitchen table while
the bewildered Juan looks on unamused.
Juan must
also contend with Lucia (Daniela Valentine), a clerk at an auto repair
shop, as they wait silently together for hours for Lucia’s colleague,
David (Juan Carlos Lara II) to show up. Lucia is a single mother, perhaps
only a few years older than Juan, who must care for an infant boy that
Juan seems to know how to get to go to sleep. Lucia wants him to listen
to her music and tries to get him to babysit her small child, but Juan
almost always says no before agreeing to anything. David turns out to
be a Kung Fu expert and a devotee of the martial arts and a source of
comic relief throughout the film.
He invites
Juan to the cinema to see Enter the Dragon, a martial arts
movie, and then tries to engage him in a kicking contest while Juan
stands there passively until David shouts at him in true Bruce Lee tones
that he needs emotional content, not anger. When Juan goes home, he
finds his little brother Joaquin playing in a tent in the yard while
his mother hides in the bathtub, telling everyone to leave her alone.
"What's 'condolences'?" Joaquin asks his older brother. He
says that "people have been calling all day, and when I answer,
everyone says... accept their condolences."
The
film is quiet and moves very slowly with an undercurrent of sadness,
though it is not without tension and its arc is unpredictable. The picture
is interrupted periodically with blank screens, seemingly providing
the characters with time to pause and reflect. Though only 81 minutes
long, Lake Tahoe feels organic and not written, capturing the
real emotions of people who seem unable to communicate their grief.
One telling scene is when Lucia and Juan fall into each other’s
arms and Juan begins to cry, the only emotion he has shown throughout
the film, other than hitting his car with a baseball bat. Diego Cataño
is excellent as Juan. He appears in every scene and carries the film
with an honest and effortless performance. Like Broken
Wings, an Israeli film from 2002 with a similar theme,
Lake Tahoe transcends the limitations of time and place to
become a universal exploration of loss and how people respond to it.
In Eimbcke's skillful hands, its sadness is relieved by the strength
and dignity of its characters, and balanced with a dry, deadpan humor.
©2010 Howard Schumann
CineScene
